The MNO Movie

Michif Speakers Gather in Timmins

Participants in the Michif Committee meeting on February 27. Back Row (l-r) Joe Paquette, MNO Regional Councillor Pauline Saulnier, MNO Timmins Métis Council President Natalie Durocher, MNO Regional Councillor Maurice Sarrazin, Lynn Picotte, Chris Paci, Senator Eugene Contant, Richard Sarrazin, Guylaine Morin-Cléroux, MNO North Bay Métis Council President Marc Laurin, Benny Michaud, Nicole Charron, Marcel Bénéteau, Brianne Gosselin, Chantal Cote, Roger Gervais and Mitch Case; Sitting (l-r) Juliette Denis, MNO Northwest Métis Council President Alvina Cimon, MNO Chair France Picotte and Louise Cloutier.Michif continues to be one of the languages spoken in Ontario today. Thanks to funding from the Aboriginal Languages Initiative, Canadian Heritage, and the Ministry of Education, on February 27, Michif speakers from across Ontario gathered for a day of sharing and discussion. The state of the Michif language spoken in Ontario is largely unknown outside of the Michif Committee. The committee has been around a number of years, functioning as a key group of dedicated volunteers with passion for the language. The day long gathering was an opportunity to share and celebrate Michif as a language for today and tomorrow.

Historically, many of the Michif speakers were reluctant to speak in public. “We are pretty sure that we have more than two dialects but how many is still unknown. This gathering of speakers is but a minute example of what I suspect to be in existence in Ontario,” said France Picotte, Chair of the Métis Nation of Ontario. The Michif language is a language of survival and of necessity. In the early days, before the formation of Canada, Michif facilitated communication between diverse peoples, aided Métis mobility (across different cultural and linguistic landscapes) and contributed to the survival of our ancestors.

There are many questions about the state of Aboriginal languages: What do we need to do to ensure these languages are not lost with the current generation of speakers? What were those things that contributed to the development of the languages? As the Métis Nation continues to grow in Ontario what do we need to do to ensure the viability of Michif? Métis peoples’ ability to communicate with diverse peoples continues to be instrumental in the development of Ontario and Canada; the same values that were important in the past are of importance today and in the future. The Métis Nation of Ontario is committed to supporting Michif--gathering, preserving and propagating all the languages spoken by Métis.